


i've never felt so...

by angelicaswork



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hamliza, I’m warning you this is really bad, Mainly angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-14 21:04:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14144562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelicaswork/pseuds/angelicaswork
Summary: an exploration of alexander and eliza's relationship through the years. (this is garbage don’t read it okay thanks.)





	i've never felt so...

**Author's Note:**

> sorry for the messiness of this fic, i skip over a lot of things and the shifts are kind of weird, but i hope you enjoy regardless!

 

 

 

_helpless._

 

.

 

Alexander never wants to open his eyes, the dream he's having is too blissful. He imagines a world where it's only him and Eliza, smiling and happy, no school work to worry about, no super catholic parents, dead mothers or fathers that abandon. It's perfect. And, god, does he wish it was real.

 

He groans when he succumbs to his surroundings, awakening to a certain kind of warmth that isn't familiar but reminds him of when he and his mother were sick and she held him. He shakes the memory of the dread he felt when she died, clinging to him, out of his head. He isn't in the mood to cry, plus he wouldn’t want to burden Eliza with that, even though he's sure she wouldn't mind.

 

He rubs his eyes awake with the heel of his hand, ignoring the stinging pain of recalling his mother and the manner in which she died. Instead, he smiles, stroking Eliza's hair as her head rests on his chest. 

 

God, she really is an angel, even in her sleep.

 

"You awake?" Eliza murmurs, eyes trailing up to his face.

 

“I think so," he smiles, staring into her eyes, lost in the dark brown orbs, “I'm not exactly sure if I'm still dreaming or not.'

 

She playfully hits him on the chest. He’s so stupid sometimes, despite being such a poetic and creative writer with outstanding grades in school. 

 

"Seriously, Betsey, you're an angel." He kisses the top of her head, causing her to blush furiously at the comment. Honestly, he doesn't think the word "angel" does Eliza any justice because she's so much more than that. But for now, his mind is too clouded with sleep and exhaustion to come up with something better in addition to that. He just needs her to know that for now and then he can whisper sonnet upon sonnet of his undying love for her into her ear before she falls asleep tonight. 

 

"Got any plans for today?" she asks in a soft, certainly angelic whisper that left him wondering why her sister got the name Angelica and not her. He realizes how stupid that thought of his is. Angelica is Angelica and Eliza is Eliza. Plain and simple. 

 

"I have an essay for Washington's class that's due next week, I was thinking about working on that," Alex says, noting that Eliza looks gorgeous, bathed in the pale sunlight coming from the window.

 

"You work too much." She says, kissing the hollow of his throat, hoping to coax him into staying in bed with her all day and not bent over his laptop, clattering away at the keyboard. She swears that he’ll slouch for the rest of his life with the way he sits while on his laptop, typing away furiously. "It's Saturday, there aren't any classes today, and your essay isn't due until _next week._ " 

 

Temptation gets the best of him and is somehow enough to make him want to stay, so he does, Eliza enveloped in his arms and his mind clear for the first time in ages. It’s so strange, the feeling of calmness like he has no priorities and like his dreams of becoming a lawyer aren’t as illegitimate as they seem. He tells himself that he ought to take breaks more often, relax and enjoy the fact that his Betsey is here beside him. 

 

He’s helpless, absolutely smitten by her.

 

.

 

There’s this feeling Alexander gets every so often and he can’t quite pinpoint what it is. Something between extreme joy and slight pain. It’s a bad feeling that morphs into a good one, one that makes him feel like he’s floating, elated beyond his wildest dreams. As he recalls, he hasn’t felt such since the peak of his college days when he and Eliza would try to study together in Eliza’s warm bed and instead end up somehow naked.

 

But now is so _different._

 

Philip cries into the baby monitor as Eliza awakes from the sliver of sleep she got last night. Alex’s head is pounding uncomfortably and Eliza is groaning. It’s around seven A.M., according to the blurry glance Alex got in at the clock, and they had only gone to sleep two hours ago at five when Philip needed a diaper change.

 

Philip must really enjoy attention from his parents.

 

Alex forces himself awake, calmly telling Eliza that he’s got it because she needs more sleep than he does. He’s used to this kind of thing.

 

He walks down the hallway to Philip’s nursery, painted a soothing light gray. The daylight is minimal, but it has crept through the shut curtains, something Philip seems to be bothered by the looks of it.

 

Alexander leans over the rim of the crib, looking down at the baby boy who ceases his crying when his father strokes the wispy black curls on his head. Philip seems to be calmed by his father’s presence, something Eliza had pointed out immediately while still in the hospital after his birth. That was three months ago he’s still the same, attached to Eliza and calmed by Alex. Despite the ceased crying, Alex lifts the little boy into his arms and kisses his forehead.

 

Alex loves the kid, he’s like Eliza, clingy when it’s appropriate and assertive when it’s necessary. But he’s almost a lot more like him than Alex cares to admit. He’s a clever baby, knows that if he cries for mommy, she’ll come. They both can already tell that he’s going to be smart when he grows older. 

 

Alex enjoys knowing that.

 

He brings little Philip back to his and Eliza’s bed, settling in and placing the baby in between him and his wife. Eliza opens her eyes and looks, watching little Philip as he babbles his baby talk. She smiles, looking at Alexander tenderly.

 

“Is he hungry?” Eliza asks, tilting her head at him.

 

“No.”

 

“Diaper change?” 

 

“Nope. Just wanted to see me, I guess.”

 

Eliza smiles dreamily, gently taking Philip from Alexander and kissing his head, soothingly gently, raking her nails over his wispy patches of hair. She enjoys just holding her son, studying his features, determining where they came from. 

 

He’s definitely got Alexander’s eyes, among many other things, but those are all more related to his personality. She smiles because if it weren’t for that brief glance she’d gotten of those eyes of his, she’s not sure where she would be now. That pair of eyes, identical to his father’s are something close to Eliza’s heart something she loves very dearly.

 

Little Philip is his father’s son in so many ways, she can already tell.

 

.

 

Peace comes harder now that little Philip is older and little Angelica is mobile and verbal, not yet able to annunciate as well as her older brother can. They are a mischievous team, however, they work together to steal cookies from the cookie jar when Eliza specifically states that the cookies are for after dinner and no time else. Philip corrects Angie when her R’s come out as W’s and when she mispronounces certain words. Eliza likes to think that Philip has his father’s smarts. 

 

Alexander swears that those children and Eliza themselves are blessings, and though he’s apprehensive that there is a higher power somewhere in the clouds above, he’s very aware of that. 

 

“I got them to sleep, I have no idea how so don’t ask. I guess they were more burnt out than I thought.” Alex says, entering the master bedroom one night after Philip and Angie have been tucked up in bed, only with a few groggy protests on each end. He considers it a success when he sees that they’ve parted for once to sleep. He knows that at breakfast Angie will cling to her brother as she usually does. Their relationship reminds him so much of Eliza and Angelica’s relationship, best of friends. He’s glad that they have that. 

 

Eliza looks up from her book with a laugh, “Good thing they were, I was beginning to think they’d taken a sip of some of your energy drinks.”

 

Alex chuckles, slipping into bed beside his wife and smiling dreamily at her. Five years of marriage isn’t much, but it’s also quite a lot where Alex is concerned. He’d never thought he’d be able to find someone that he loved so much, someone he knew everything about, someone he wanted to share his life with. But Eliza is all of that and so much more and here he is thinking about blessings again. Much less had he thought that he’d settle down into a cookie-cutter neighborhood in the suburbs and have two and a half children by the age of twenty-nine. Nevertheless, he wouldn’t trade his little family for the world.

 

Eliza struggles to get comfortable, settling for laying on her right side to face Alex. At twenty weeks pregnant, she’s rapidly getting more and more uncomfortable. Things have become harder and more exhausting as they had all those years ago when she’d had Philip and then when she had Angie two years later. She managed then and she’s managing now. That’s what she has to tell herself each and every day to stay motivated and patient as the baby develops. 

 

“Lord, help us if that ever happens,” Alex says, a light rising in his throat. 

 

Eliza smiles, that same dazzling smile that he’d seen that night she’d hidden behind Angelica and stared him down across the ballroom, eventually getting Angelica to be her wing woman. That smile is what made him first realize, at the brink of their college days, that he loved her. 

 

He told himself he was going marry her someday in that same moment that she smiled up at him. 

 

He’s so glad his young self had been right. 

 

Even after five years of marriage and two and a half kids, he’s still so helpless for her, his Eliza.

 

.

 

Eliza’s eyes sting with tears, her blood boils, her heart pounds in her ears and it’s all she can hear. As much as she wished and hoped it was enough, for Alexander, it never is. Five kids aren’t enough, she isn’t enough. Angelica is right. She always is. She’s watchful and cunning and it’s like she’s knows everything because she’s always getting things right. She should’ve known, shouldn’t have left to go upstate that summer or just plain should have listened to Angelica in the beginning.

 

Her heart hardens when she looks down at the crumpled paper in her hands. 

 

_The Reynolds Pamphlet._

 

She stiffens, shifts slightly in her chair. There’s a nudge from within her that distracts her. That’s when she remembers. She’s been so caught up in her anger and disdain that she forgot that she was pregnant for a moment. She looks down, she can’t see her toes, she’s close to giving birth, any day now, really.

 

She presses a soothing hand to the spot her sixth little one had so firmly nudged and feels the tear begin to trickle down her cheeks. Her whole body shakes and all that she can think about is Alexander taking Maria Reynolds to their bed and betraying her. 

 

The baby calms, Eliza wants to think it’s because he knows that his mama is there. “I know, my love,” she whispers to her belly. “Your father is an idiot.”

 

She cries. She cries so much that Angelica, the younger, peeps into her mother’s room and asks if she’s okay. Eliza composes herself enough to tell her darling only daughter that she is just fine and to go back to practicing her scales on the piano. The tears pour harder after Angelica closes the door.

 

That night, she burns some of his letters to her and washes the sheets of their bed five consecutive times. They still aren’t clean. 

 

She’s helpless but in a different way.

 

.

 

Alexander arrives home that night to see Angelica barricading the entryway. She’s angry, he sees a certain glint in her eyes that tells him everything. She’s also a mess, something very rare for Angelica, but she’d taken the first flight here from London and had spent the majority of her day calming Eliza down and caring for the children bed she knew Eliza couldn’t.

 

He unlocks the doors and sees his sister-in-law sitting in front of the entrance to the living room, her jaw clenched, restraining the overwhelming urge to slap him.

 

“Angelica—“ He’s not stupid. He knows she’s here for Eliza and the children more than him. “I’m sorry… it was an act of political sacrifice, I had to do it to save myself from being slandered—“

 

“Oh my god!” Angelica howls, her anger coming to a boiling point. “You don’t get it, do you? I’ll remind you since it seems you forgotten, Eliza is your wife! He and those children are the best things that have happened to you and you just decide to fuck it all up! Your children’s lives, I mean how do you think the kids at school are going to treat Philip and Angie now that they all know that their father is a fucking moron? Eliza’s life, too, she’s your fucking wife! I witnessed you two get married, I was there when she gave birth!  Every single time! You’ve really invented a new kind of stupid! A monumentally astounding kind of stupid! So congratulations! You fucked your family up because you can’t seem to understand that they are more important than your career. Congratulations!”

 

Alexander spends the next few nights in his office. He’s close enough to Eliza’s room that he can hear her crying, sobbing loudly into Angelica’s shoulder. He has no right to cry, he did this to himself, he made the decision, but he does. 

 

.

 

In early August, Eliza goes into labor, and it’s too late to get her to the hospital, so Angelica calls a midwife and the baby is born on the same bed he’d taken Maria Reynolds to all those years ago.

 

He sits in his office, the room right across from their—Eliza’s room with the door wide open, able to hear Eliza’s frequent cries and moans of pain. It pains him that instead of his hand, she’s squeezing Angelica’s hand. 

 

He tries to write through the noise and is glad that Peggy had taken all of the kids so that they didn’t have to witness their mother’s pain.

 

Before the baby is born, Angelica allows him into to room, reluctantly, and he watches his fifth son and sixth child’s birth. He cuts the cord and cries softly to himself when he holds the infant for the first time. Eliza stares, unsure how to feel. 

 

A few hours later, while Eliza sleeps as peacefully as she can, Alexander sits in the rocking chair in the corner of the room and rocks the baby. Eliza draws the line at him sitting in the chair, and he knows that he’s not allowed any closer to her unless the baby needs her and he has to pass him to her.

 

Their son is called William. Alexander instantly loves their boy. He’s absolutely perfect.

 

Eliza watches them, pretending to be asleep still and tries not to cry when she watches him interact with the infant. She hates him. She _hates_  him. But she loves him.

 

God, she loves him.

 

But she hates him.

 

.

 

The months pass effortlessly and Eliza allows Alexander back into their bedroom. He doesn’t think he deserves it, but he just wants her to be happy, and if having him by her side is what she needs, he’ll do it. So he does. 

 

Two years after he is forgiven, their second daughter, little Eliza is born.

 

Eliza weeps the second she lays eyes on the perfect baby girl, so enamored by her. She loves her boys with all of her heart, and Angie too, but having another girl is exciting. She’d taken it for granted with Angie because she was only her second child and had she known that the probability of having a baby girl was low for her and that they were a rare occurrence for her, she probably would have relished it more, especially now that Angie is sixteen.

 

Things are gradually getting back to normal, and when little Lizzie comes home, Angie shrieks to know that she finally has herself a sister.

 

.

 

Philip is shot in November two years later. A dispute with a student over what he said about Alexander in a speech gets him shot. He lays, frail on a hospital bed in the emergency room, trembling in abject fear when Alexander comes rushing in, speeding to the hospital immediately when he hears about Philip’s injuries.

 

He’s a mess, frantic, his voice shuttering.

 

“Philip,” He says after talking to a doctor briefly, cradling his son’s body.

 

He’s nineteen. He can’t die. Not now.

 

“Pa,” he breathes, unable to collect enough air into his lungs to take a steady breath. “I did everything you said. I was polite and he pulled a gun out on me…”

 

“I know,” Alexander shushes.

 

“I’m so sorry, Pa,” he cries, his voice breathy. The pain is too much to bear. He aches everywhere.

 

“No. Don’t apologize,” 

 

It’s then that Eliza comes barreling in, she's as rushed as Alexander had been, stumbling and sobbing quietly to herself as she approaches the bed, standing beside Alexander and leaning over Philip.

 

“Alexander? What happened? Who did this?” She screams a slur of questions that Alexander can’t answer. His heart sinks.

 

“Mom,” Philip croaks, “I’m so sorry for forgetting what you taught me.” 

 

“Philip, no,” 

 

“You taught me piano.” 

 

Eliza laughs half-heartedly. “You changed the melody every time.”

 

Philip shutters. “Un, deux, trios, quartre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf.” Philip recites proudly, breathing becomes harder with each word.

 

Eliza repeats after her eldest son until the heart monitor beeps and nurses and doctor come rushing over.

 

Philip _dies_.

 

They are both rendered helpless.

.

 

It’s two years later. They have an eighth child and name him Philip after his brother. They honor him, never intend to replace the little boy they raised with such pride and happiness. They plan to do the same with little Phil.

 

Alexander loves his newest son, prides himself with the boy's resemblance of his older brother and spends many nights in the nursery, sitting in the rocking chair and crying softly as he holds the tiny boy.

 

He misses his other Philip, but he loves them both so much his heart can’t quite catch up to his brain.

 

. 

 

Alexander gasps. Pain enthralls him. He cannot breathe. He misses the children, Philip who rests, Angie who occupies her days with grief since her brother died, Junior who reads, James who likes to paint and draw, John who laughs and smiles and pads on bare feet, William who clings to him, Lizzie, his little girl, and little Phil who can barely talk. 

 

Eliza leans over him, eyes glassy as she watches his pale face contort with rapt attention. She smiles sadly, stroking his cheek.

 

He’s been shot over a disagreement with Aaron Burr.

 

And now, Eliza suffers.

 

“It’s okay.” She whispers. “You do whatever you need.” She kisses his temple softly, watching his eyes wander up to her as she does so. His heart sinks.

 

Everything slows, but before he can go gently into that good night, he whispers to his dearest Betsey, “I love you. Best of wives and best of women.”

 

“I love you too, Alexander.”

 

He’s helpless in that moment as his soul leaves his body and he joins their son on the other side.

 

Eliza cries and grieves. Angie shatters after the loss, unable to handle it all. The other children strive to understand. The older ones do, while the youngest three do not. Angelica is as supportive as she can be.

 

Even after his death, she’s helpless. 

 

She lives another fifty years. It’s _never_ enough.

**Author's Note:**

> there it is! hope you liked it! if you did, leave me so feedback in the comments and kudos!
> 
> check out my tumblr: schuylerrham


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